In TCP, when an endpoint device wishes to terminate the connection, the endpoint device will transmit a FIN packet, which the other end, e.g., a web server, will acknowledge with an ACK packet. Furthermore, TCP also allows the use of a RST packet to abort a TCP connection for a number of different reasons, e.g., to close a half open connection and the like. FIN and RST packets that close TCP connections are often delayed by timeout. In cellular networks, delayed FIN/RST packets often incur significant energy consumption overhead for handsets (broadly mobile endpoint devices). On the other hand, closing TCP connection immediately after the last data transfer avoids the energy overhead, but can cause performance degradation as doing so makes reusing TCP connections difficult.